Hi all,

 

I have been Assassin tank from day 1 of Aussie server release (never gone DPS, Darkness since level 10).

 

Just wondering what everyone's thoughts are on the new Dread Guard Relics available in 1.5 and which would be considered BiS (for PvE).

 

At the moment I am using the War Hero defense relic as it has the highest amount of flat defense rating and in 1.4 was considered BiS, as well as the Campaign on-use defense relic.

In 1.5, there are quite a few more options. Considering you would go with 1 proc and 1 on-use relic, here are the available choices.

 

Relic 1:

Dread Guard Relic of Imperilling Serenity - 350 Defense Rating for 20 seconds. (On-Use)

Dread Guard Relic of the Shrouded Crusader - 215 Shield + 215 Absorb for 20 seconds. (On-Use)

 

Relic 2:

Dread Guard Relic of Shield Amplification - 455 Absorb for 6 sec with 20 sec ICD (Proc, about 30% uptime, works out to be around 135-140 overall absorb).

War Hero Relic of Imperilling Serenity - 113 flat Defense, lower Endurance than Dread Guard relics.

 

So which two would you chose from the above and why? At the moment I am sitting at 65% shield (with DW up), 60% absorb and 30% defense (stimmed). I am currently using the Campaign on-use defense relic + the War Hero one. I figure, since my Defense rating is already well over the DR value (25%) that going for the Dread Guard +350 Defense relic and boosting the one stat would not be as good getting the On-Use Shield/Absorb relic - as it will be raising two stats slightly lower than the one. Would a 215 shield + 215 absorb be of higher value than a +350 defense rating relic in 1.5 as all three mitigation stats are sitting over their DR value?

 

Any thoughts on what you as an Assassin tank will be using in 1.5?

Edited October 16, 2012 by Chaori

No replies? Thought more people would be interested in min-maxing for 1.5. I myself have raised 600 Daily comms, gonna go for 900 and buy all 3 DG relics and experiment with them to see which is best

proc heal trinket

 

proc absorb trinket

proc heal trinket

 

proc absorb trinket

 

Dread Guard Relic of Ephemeral Mending - Equip: Healing an ally has a 50% chance to restore an additional 505 health over 3 seconds. This effect can only occur once every 20 seconds, and shares this limit with similar healing effects.

 

^ This one? I have never even considered using a healing relic.. It's heal effect would be based on our Willpower right?

Edited October 18, 2012 by Chaori

Dread Guard Relic of Ephemeral Mending - Equip: Healing an ally has a 50% chance to restore an additional 505 health over 3 seconds. This effect can only occur once every 20 seconds, and shares this limit with similar healing effects.

 

^ This one? I have never even considered using a healing relic.. It's heal effect would be based on our Willpower right?

 

I'm not sure if it would benefit from willpower, what I do know is that it procs off the dark charge and force lightning heals.

 

I'd say the absorb relic is a given and I prefer the PVP +defense relic for the 2nd slot. More total mitigation points.

I'm not sure if it would benefit from willpower, what I do know is that it procs off the dark charge and force lightning heals.

 

Well Willpower boosts our total 'bonus healing' - only our self-heals don't benefit from this as they are percentage based. As this is a set amount I assume it will benefit from the bonus healing we receive from Willpower and Power.

 

I'd say the absorb relic is a given and I prefer the PVP +defense relic for the 2nd slot. More total mitigation points.

 

I know the War Hero relic is currently BiS but don't you think the stats provided by the Dread Guard relics surpasses the WH one? At least until the Elite WH Imperilling Serenity relic comes out. BioWare said after 1.3 they would never make PvP gear viable for end-game PvE and vice-versa

Edited October 18, 2012 by Chaori

So I just tested the Campaign Relic of Ephemeral Mending and it doesn't actually benefit from our Bonus Healing attribute unfortunately

 

Here are the results over a 3 minute boss fight with Force Lightning at 3 stacks as my highest priority:

http://i.imgur.com/B9kzF.png

 

2800 heals over a 3 minute fight is definitely not worth it over mitigation. That's not even 1 heal from a healer in the group.

Edited October 18, 2012 by Chaori

The question is, would 110 defense (or similar defensive stat) have adjust your mean survivability rate to account for more than 2800 hp over a 3 minute fight?

 

That's what it all boils down to really. How much do you absorb/heal/deflect/dodge/block/immune/etc. Which relics will, in combination, allow you to do the greatest combination of all of the above, in effective hitpoints. Choose the highest number. Yes, there are outlier encounters, such as extremely high tech damage fights (where a healing trinket would win over an absorb trinket), or a strictly melee damage fight (where perhaps defense would win out) or a very high spike damage fight (where on use trinkets might be better).

 

But for general usage, most agree that the proc absorb trinket mitigates the most damage overall. Does the healing trinket mitigate (through healing) more hitpoints of 'damage' through it's healing than your 110 (roughly) defense from war hero? Will it pull ahead with dreadguard?

 

Try looking at it from that perspective. I am only offering some different perspectives. I don't have the resources to theorycraft the details with you mate, sorry.

Assuming that your stats are ~ 30%def, 50% shield 60%abs, id say to go with the on-use shield/abs dread guard relic instead of the defense one. Personally, im a defense fanatic. I stack it till it hard caps for no intelligent reason. However, Based on diminishing returns, adding the extra stats from a defense on-use relic, you go from 30 to 32% defense. Whereas the shield/abs relic will give you a shield boost from 65 - 73%shield (50 - 58% if dark ward is down) and 60 - 65%absorb. Your choices are 2% chance to dodge 100% damage, or an extra 8% chance to block 65% damage. Force attacks aren't relevant in this, since neither will mitigate them. So all things swing in favor of the shield/absorb relic.

Based on diminishing returns, adding the extra stats from a defense on-use relic, you go from 30 to 32% defense.

 

Something must be missing from your calculations, because that just does not match with what I can see.

 

I go from from 27.95% to 34.27% when activating DG relic of imperiling serenity.

Now if someone has more defense rating without relic activated they should have also more with it.

There is no way you can have less percentage with more rating, if the base percentages are the same. It just does not work that way. Further increases at higher percentages get gradually smaller, but they are still increases.

 

So if at 27.95% I get +6.32% from it to push it up to 34.27%, then someone with 30% should get, I would estimate, something still over +5% pushing them to over 35%.

 

 

30% defense chance also is not any kind of a cap. There is of course a theoretical cap of 30% gained from the rating alone, (which would mean 46% actual defense chance) but since that is completely unreachable, it is largely irrelevant.

30% of the actual defense chance is not any kind of point of significance.

 

A properly specced assassin tank with 0 defense rating gear does have 16% defense chance (10% base defense + another 6% from various points spent in the skill tree) . That means that at 30% defense chance, a properly specced assassin tank does have only 14% defense chance gained from the defense rating stat.

14% is not even close to being halfway up to diminishing returns curve, and one technically could go (not saying that they should) much higher without DR getting very high.

 

Maybe without those 6% it might be a bit different story.

So, there's an extensive thread in the heroic missions subforum where we run through the math for the new DG and EWH relics for all classes and roles. The information is a bit spread-out though, so I'm not surprised you missed it. The best-in-slot, in terms of overall survivability (mean healing required) contribution is as follows:

 

 

• Dread Guard Relic of Ephemeral Mending (best in slot)
  
• War Hero Relic of Imperiling Serenity
  

 

 

The proc absorb relic is best-in-slot until late Campaign tier, at which point the diminishing returns on absorb rating crimps the proc absorb contribution below that of the defense relic. I'm nearly full Dread Guard at this point, and the static defense relic is 0.57% better than the proc absorb. This gap will continue to widen as my stat budget increases.

 

As a side note, don't use the activated relics unless you're on a fight where you really, really need another cooldown (e.g. Nightmare Kephess). They're really bad compared to the static relics, and really really bad compared to the healing relic.